Standard of Living
by Fellowshipper
Summary: A year after the Psi-Wars, Chamber is still without his telepathy, his voice, and a reason to keep going.
1. Default Chapter

**Title:** Standard of Living 

**Rating:** PG-13. A few curse words, but mostly just for stuff that might squick you out, like rampant self-destruction and one slightly graphic scene. Jono's a messed up little boy, what can I say? 

**Notes:** ...Youch. Dark, dark piece, that's all I can say. Read at your own risk. 

**Continuance Note: **Set roughly a year after the Psi-Wars. Other than that, continuity took a dive out the window. ****

**Disclaimer:** They're Marvel's. Chapter header lyrics are marked appropriately, and the title is from a lovely Jewel song called Deep Water. The entire line I wanted to use is "our standard of living somehow got stuck on survive" - but the chapters had something else in mind. 

******

_Maybe I'm all messed up..._

_This is the only time I really feel alive._

_-- Nine Inch Nails, "The Only Time"_

I've never been one for irony. Sarcasm, yes. I live off it. But irony is usually cruel and always negative, so I try to stay as far from it as possible. So why am I babbling like this? Because I've finally realized just how I feel about a certain blonde angel from Kentucky and I want to tell her that I care for her so much that it hurts, something I've been much too scared to admit all along. The whole beautiful irony of it all is that now that I've finally come to terms with my feelings and decided I should share them with Paige, I can't. Literally. I have no voice to convey my words, and paper isn't good enough. I have so much I want, need to tell her, things I never would have dreamed of saying a year ago, and I can't. I'm stuck in this voiceless, faceless pit with the dirt coming in on top of me and no way to get out. It's amazing how suddenly brave you are with your emotions once you're left with no way to get them across.

So, I stay down here and play. 

No one looks for me down here. Oh, they used to, I suppose. Up until I saw Everett poke his head through the door and ask if I wanted to go catch a movie with him and Jubilee. Thankfully for him, my nine hundred page English book nailed the wall behind him. That was pretty much the last time they tried to get me to be normal again. 

Sean's stopped worrying and stopped fussing over me. The poor bloke's been run crazy between me and Emma and Monet all having a few loose screws, but being the good man that he is, he tried for longer than I can remember to help us out of the funk we'd gotten ourselves into. I think Monet was the first, and Emma's still coming around. Sean eventually gave up on me, and I can't blame him. How can I? I gave up on myself months ago. He's even stopped worrying over my grades now, and he doesn't insist on seeking me out when I don't come to class. I'm glad for that much, since English Lit is the only class I still try to attend on a fairly regular basis. 

When I'm not dodging teachers or would-be friends, I sit down here in the basement and play my guitar, and sometimes it helps. Fingers run up and down the neck of the guitar, unplugged so no one else has to hear my misery. I don't want them to. It's my misery and mine alone and I don't need some halfwit down here telling me that everything is going to be okay when I know it won't. I can feel it, feel the misery as surely as though it's truly manifested itself into solid matter, into the blisters on my hands from playing this guitar, into the blood that isn't really blood at all dotting the frets.

It's all I have now. My pain, my hands, and my guitar to play a song for the world that I want it to hear and pray it never does. I want it to feel how I feel and yet I hope for sanity's sake that it doesn't. No one should have to deal with this - it's destroyed me. 

I pause for a moment, frustrated because I can't remember the next part of the song. It's a haunting, angry piece with intricately woven melodies and harmonies that form a beauty only a musician could possibly know. It's also hard as hell to learn; I've been trying since I was sixteen. It's harder still to imagine someone so hurt and broken they could write something like this, but they did and it's become an obsession with me to learn how to play it. I have a feeling that I'll never know how it's supposed to sound until I get as hurt and broken as the tortured soul who wrote it. That might not be too far from now. 

Unfortunately, the songbook is across the room on my bed, and I can't seem to find the motivation to get up and get it. I can't seem to find the motivation to do much of anything these days, even live. My powers have seen to it that I needn't worry about that, though. So I sit here and stare at the songbook like I think it's going to walk over here. Considering I paid almost sixty pounds for it, it should bloody well do it and fold my laundry on the way over. 

It's silent here, leaving me free to listen to what's going on overhead. The rec room is directly above my head, conveniently enough, and there are loud noises coming from it. Jubilee's screeching. Angelo's swearing. Paige's laughing. And as much as I'd like to say I wish I was up there, I can't. I don't. I want to be left here alone, in the dark, with nothing to hold onto but my guitar and what's left of my sanity and oh God, someone help me . . . 

But no one hears my unspoken plea, so I go back to the guitar and use it to give the misery a voice I wish I could. 

  
  


It's been a year since I was cleared from the medlab. A year and a week since my world - what remained of it - came down about my ears. I'd prayed to a god I barely believed in for weeks after my powers manifested to kill me and make everything go away. When the world around me exploded one day many months later, I thought I'd finally been answered. Everything burst into a white light, so glorious and terrifying and gorgeous I thought I was about to meet the Creator my parents taught me to believe in long ago. Then came the flurry of broken images - Cable, Phoenix, Nate Grey, Emma, Monet - all disjointed and not making a bit of sense. Then we were all simultaneously pulled onto the Astral Plane. The proximity of it all, being so close to every telepath on Earth, was intoxicating. While I had no idea what was happening, I knew I wanted this feeling of powerlessness, of being held slave to a . . . something more powerful than I could ever hope to be, of still being more in control of myself than ever. I touched every mind on this planet in rapid succession, and felt more heartache and joy in a moment than I could in a million lifetimes. 

And just as I came down off the frightening, unnatural high, I realized we were all about to change. 

We stood, more or less, in a cluster inside the very heart of the plane, the crux that every telepath dreams of touching. Doing so would lead to certain death, a sort of mental electrocution, but damn, it's a way to go. Psylocke stood just outside, and some shadow creature stood behind her, taunting her, and before anyone could stop her, she struck a blow deep into the heart of every telepath in existence. 

I watched, one by one, as others fell around me, all by milliseconds but seeming like a lifetime. If I had to compare it to something, I would say it is a feeling very close to dying and being reborn at once. So many thoughts tore through my head, emotions on a level non-psis can't understand, and I staggered under the weight. I wanted to laugh, cry, murder someone and have a child, sing, ask who was reaching orgasm at that moment. I wanted to stay in that insane rut, just quietly lose my mind and live forever as a mindless, soulless being caught in eternal rapture. 

And then it ended. 

All of it happened in the span of one second. One second was all it took to show me what was mine for a moment and what would never be again, and then it was over. 

I woke up a week later. 

I don't think I felt anything, just. . .emptiness. I knew something precious and deeply personal had been taken from me, but I didn't know what exactly it was until I tried to speak. I felt a horrible pain in my head, and then nothing. No one else's thoughts, no psychic impressions, nothing. I would have cried if I could. 

Angelo was in the room when I woke, and as soon as he saw me moving, he was hanging halfway out the medlab doorway, screaming to Sean or Emma that I was awake. Then he was back at my side, smiling that idiotic smile of his that would have been welcome any other time. 

"Hey," he greeted with his usual casual manner. "Glad to see you're still around, amigo." 

I grabbed his shirt collar and yanked with so much strength I heard threads tearing. Hearing, unfortunately, did not equal caring. 'Where is it?' my mind demanded, but for some reason the words weren't traveling along the temporary mental link I established with everybody when I tried to talk. Angelo just blinked like a deer in headlights and I shook him angrily. 'Where?' It was asked loudly enough so that, if the word did get to his mind as it always had, it probably would have given him a mild concussion. Imagine my surprise when he didn't even blink that time, just pried my fingers off his shirt and went in search of something I couldn't see. 

That something was square and flat with spiral along the edge, and it took a moment for it to register that it was his biology notebook. With a bit of advice - "Write it down." - he pushed his pencil into my hand. Shock subsiding, I obliged him and wrote my question down, then all but threw the paper at him. "Where's what?" he asked after a minute, and I could do nothing but point to my head. I half expected him to give some bloody smart remark like "on your shoulders" or something to that effect, but Angelo is smarter than that, which is good. Otherwise, I probably would have used the pencil still in my hand and jabbed it into his throat. 

"It's gone, hombre," he replied rather unnecessarily. My hand tightened around the pencil. "No one knows what happened, just that the Astral Plane shut down or something. Monet just came around, an' Emma's . . . well, going loca, I think." He shrugged sympathetically. "Near as we can tell, telepathy's pretty much dead right now." 

Like me. I stopped caring what he said then, drew my arms around myself and tried to come to grips with this. My powers had taken my life from me and replaced it with something else, and I'd just started to get used to it when even my powers were taken from me. I always thought I'd be happy when that day came, but goddammit all, those were my powers and should **not** have been taken like that. Just . . . stolen. It was a violation that angered me to the core, and scared me just as much. 

Angelo, being the friend he is, could just about guess what my little internal row was about, and he hugged me in a way that would have raised suspicions from those who didn't know us. We're both loners by nature, but damned if we're not horribly clingy with each other. "I'm sorry," he whispers against my hair. "I can't even think of what you're goin' through, but I'll - we'll help, okay?" 

No, it's not okay, because hugs aren't enough, but I let him hold me for a while anyway. 


	2. 2

_Little out of touch, little insane _

_Just easier than dealing with the pain_

_-- Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"_

Sometime after that I got stuck in what Jubilee called Psychic Rehab, and she was right. It was some quack therapy group with me, Emma, and Monet, and we were supposed to talk through our problems. Bloody joke that was. I went to two meetings, neither of which I participated in. I'd talked to every psychiatrist in England in a two year span. I didn't need Sean playing shrink, too. 

When that failed, I retreated into my cave. It's dark and black and cold, everything about me reflected in it, and it's mercifully undisturbed save for a few various appearances by my teammates trying to get me to join them on some adventure. As I said earlier, that ended when I nearly decapitated Ev. No thanks, I'd rather stay here and be poetic and contemplate the giant hole in my body. I never thought it was possible, but it repulses me now more than ever. It's so dark and . . . empty. A bit too close to my life, really. 

The therapy sessions backfired, because I'm just not the type to be able to work successfully through problems. Dad dragged me to therapy sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school right after I turned seventeen. Wanted to know why I was cutting myself, putting cigarettes out in my skin, trying to drink myself into oblivion. Hell if I know why I did it. Gave me something to do, I guess. As with every other person in my life, it wasn't long before he gave up and let me try to tear myself into pieces, but the therapy started again as soon as I got out of the hospital. Cut myself once, nicked a vein on accident. All those degrees on Carol Brooke's wall made her conclude it was a botched suicide attempt, subconsciously made, of course. My . . . relationship with the good doctor ended when I made it clear that if I'd been trying to kill myself, I wouldn't have botched it. That didn't bother her so much as me then going into great detail about how exactly I _would_ have done it. 

Because Mr. Cassidy is a nice bloke and generally well meaning, I agreed to go to his bloody stupid therapy deals. All they managed to do was make me remember how miserable my powers had made me and how much more miserable I was once they were taken. If anything else, the therapy made me feel worse than my darkest thoughts ever could. 

I guess you can say I reverted back to my old self, before my powers showed up and made me that much more of a freak. I've lost track of how many times I've stretched out on my bed, taking burning incense and poking, prodding, trying to find some part of my body that can still feel pain. Just burnt flesh and dead nerves and a big nose, that's all I am now. That didn't stop me, though, so I kept poking. I left marks, countless marks, burning even more scars into pale skin, and felt nothing. That proving unsuccessful, I went back to cutting. The cuts from when I was sixteen, seventeen, however old I was, had already healed up, so I traced the little pocket knife along the scars. Opened them up. Wanted to bleed. Wanted to . . . feel. Anything. Pain would have been nice, fear at what I was doing to myself would have been better, but I would have taken anything. I got nothing. 

So many nights I just sat on the mattress, blood that was far too sluggish and dark to be of much use welling in wounds deep enough to kill me if I'd been normal. Then the blood just stopped and the cut healed over of its own doing. Figures that my powers would be making life hell for me even after they're gone. 

One night I got desperate, would have given my soul just to feel honest to God pain again or even anything that would have let me know underneath it all I was still human, and I went off in search of something. I knew Emma kept a handgun in her room, but I also knew she kept it locked away in a box beneath her bed. I think she was scared I'd flip out one day and become another statistic. 

  
  


Besides, I wasn't willing to inflict that sort of pain on myself. I was insane, probably, but after everything I'd been through, I couldn't bring myself to off myself the only way I knew how. Take the head and the body will fall, I read once. Well, that wasn't happening, not when it meant just doing even more visible damage to an already destroyed body. 

One night, I just decided to go dance with death and see how close I could come. 

I put all thoughts of Emma's gun out of my mind and headed to the biosphere, an apple in either hand. Of anyone in the entire school who might know how I feel, it's Penny. The poor girl's been trapped inside that diamond prison for who knows how long, and she can't scream for help, not in a conventional way. She does, though, but it seems like I'm the only one who hears. 

When I walked inside, she, of course, was no where to be found, so I sat down on a rock and waited. She came out on my right side after a few minutes, and I wished for the first time in months that I could smile at her. She looked so innocent, even with the razors for claws. I held an apple out to her, and she didn't even hesitate, just reached out with hands made careful by practice and easily sliced the fruit. As she ate each piece one at a time, I found myself wondering how she put up with it, because I knew she wasn't deaf and dumb like everyone seemed to think. She had to see Monet's and Paige's beauty, Jubilee's obstinance, and she had to want that for herself. I watched her eat and felt a heart I no longer had break in sympathy for her. She was exactly like me, watching the world from a safe distance, all the while wishing she could be part of it, wanting the simple things everyone else had.

By the time she finished the second apple, I'd gathered the courage I needed to stand and hold out my hand to her. She stared at it curiously for quite some time, puzzled that I was holding it out and there was no apple in it. I put it closer to her, and she took the hint. She was scared of hurting me, and I was ashamed of taking unfair advantage of her that way, but in the long run it would help both of us, I think. She accepted my hand and I pulled her up, surprised momentarily by her height. I got over it quickly. 

I wanted to talk to her, ask her for a dance, but I don't think any words were needed. Pain reflected pain in our eyes, and right then we were both very much aware that we were the only two people on earth who would ever know suffering like this, who would ever have a conceivable idea of how the other felt. 

So we danced. 

I don't know how long we twirled and moved together in the fancy greenhouse she called her home. I do know that deep gouges were forming everywhere on me. I ignored them for the most part, opting instead to take her hand and spin her around in a quick circle. She wavered uncertainly afterwards, teetering on unsteady feet, and my eyes smiled the smile my mouth couldn't. 

For the first time since I'd joined that cursed school, I felt pain.

I imagine we must have been quite a sight when what seemed to be the entire team showed up, all in varying states of undress. I remember seeing Jubilee's mouth dropped wide open and hearing Paige's gasp. Angelo was simply staring in wide-eyed shock, and Monet . . . well, she was Monet. Ev, always the well adjusted one, decided to point out the obvious. 

"Jono, um . . . you're bleeding." 

I looked down, for some reason, and sure enough there were cuts and gouges crisscrossing everywhere, showing through torn clothes. It was worth it. 

"I cannae believe this!" Sean bellowed in that authoritative tone of his that let me know I was in for it when he got the chance to yell properly. Penny jumped at the voice, knowing Sean had never yelled at her before, and I felt terribly guilty for dragging her into this. She started to run off when I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to me, the simple gesture causing more wounds to open in my palm. I ignored them. She stared at the ugly cuts everywhere on me, and I shrugged in response, wishing I could tell her not to worry about them, that they'd be healed up before the sun rose. I wanted to thank her for the lovely if not graceful dance, for letting me feel human for just a few brief minutes, but as always with us, I don't think words were required. She met my eyes, and I swear to this day I think she smiled at me. 

But then she was off and into the bushes somewhere before I could blink. 

"I cannae believe how-how stupid -" Sean continued sputtering in insane fury, and I decided I didn't want to hear it. He wouldn't understand even if I wanted to try to explain why I'd done it. I tried to walk past him, wincing at the absolutely searing pain shooting through me, and he stopped me with one large, strong hand on my shoulder. "How could ye do this, Jono?" He asked me quietly. I didn't answer, just pulled away from him and cast one last, longing glance to the biosphere before heading out. 

I haven't seen Penance since. 

I spent the next couple hours in the medlab, knowing that if I could I'd have been grinning like a lunatic. I was one, after all. Paige stayed there with me, taking care to dab antiseptic into the hundreds of cuts I'd earned just from one fleeting night of happiness. She was disapproving, that much was written on her face, and more than a little worried for my mental state, but for the most part she managed to keep her opinions to herself. Her conversation was limited to "hold still" and "stop squirming" and the occasional "God, Jono, I can't believe you did this to yourself." She shook her head a lot, once when she applied the last bandage. Her hands lingered on the gauze, fingers tapping thoughtfully against my shoulder, and shook her head in something that could have been amusement. It made her hair fall into her face, and I acted before I could stop to think of what I was doing. I reached up and brushed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear, and we stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. 

Then I got up and left. 


	3. 3

_My life has been a nightmare,_

_My soul is fractured to the bone._

_So if I must be lonely,_

_I think I'd rather be alone._

_- Stabbing Westward, "Save Yourself" _

The night after the dance, Paige showed up at my door, shoebox in hands, nervous smile on her face. Like an angel in blue jeans, she was. I motioned her in with one hand and used the other to put the incense back in its holder on the table. She gave me an odd look, then shrugged her thoughts away and shifted the box uneasily from one hip to the other. 

"How're your cuts?" 

I made the universally understood 'so-so' gesture and she nodded in response. The next thing I knew, she was kneeling in front of me. It's a bad sign that I was too distracted to even think of the dozen or so filthy thoughts that should've crossed my mind. 

"I thought this might help," she announced, taking the top off the box. I caught a glimpse of flash cards inside and looked away, refusing to lose the one scrap of dignity to which I'd been so desperately clinging. Paige knew I was a very proud person beneath the self-hatred, and that's why she gave me that look that would have stolen my breath in another life. "I used to volunteer at King's Daughters," she continued, unwrapping a rubber band from a stack of cards. "In the mutant section, actually, and once there was this deaf girl. It was a long time ago, though, so I'm a little rusty." 

I grabbed the pen and paper I resentfully kept at my side. _And what happened to the girl?_

I'd heard Paige's story about Nicole before and knew the question would get to her, and I wanted it to. Call me an evil bastard, but I wanted to cause as much pain as possible on anything I could. It wasn't worth it, though, to see Paige's eyes fill with tears as she fumbled blindly with the cards. 

"She. . .she died." 

Nicole was fourteen when her secondary telepathic ability surfaced, so sudden and fierce it fried every synapse in her brain. She, like me, had had no voice to scream. 

So I became Paige's personal redemption, a small way to make up for something she thought was somehow her fault. I made her feel like trash for ever bringing up the idea, too, and I feel unbelievably guilty for lashing out at her when she didn't remotely deserve it. I do not, however, feel guilty enough to apologize. 

Here it is a year later, three days after my nineteenth birthday, and I'm still without my telepathy, without my voice. By day I struggle with the music I want to play but can't seem to grasp, by night I let Paige try to teach me to sign. It's not as degrading as it used to be, and we can communicate fairly well now. Somewhere along the line, she worked her way off the floor and into my lap, and her hands stop signing now and then to explore. I don't fight her. We're, ironically, more of a couple now than ever. It's incredibly hard to properly hold up your end of an argument in sign language. 

Then we have times when we sit in the basement on my couch, her in my lap with her head on my shoulder, and I let myself start to think I'll ever be anything less than a freak and we'll ever be truly happy together. Those times are few and becoming fewer. 

I put the guitar away and head slowly upstairs to her room. She's moved from the one shared with Jubilee for a multitude of reasons. I can't begin to pick one. Nonetheless, I knock on her door and she lets me in a minute later, wearing a robe and wet hair clinging to her face. Guess I caught her in an awkward moment. 

She smiles brightly anyway and shuts the door behind me. "Hi. Kinda bad timing." 

She's gorgeous and I don't want to do this but I can't go on forever this way, forced into masochism just to feel human again. 

Without thinking, I start signing. _I love you._

She blinks in surprise. I clamp down on the urge to do the same. "I . . . uh. . .what brought this on?" 

_Life._ I hesitate._ Death. _

If I hadn't confused her, she would've rolled her eyes. "Don't get cryptic, Jono." 

_Tell me you love me. Mean it. _

She's not sure what to say to that, so she thinks about it for a long, agonizing time. "I love you. Honestly, I do. I thought you knew that. But why -" 

_That's all I needed. _I pull her closer, tug at her soft blue robe. It comes open between manipulative fingers, and not surprisingly reveals a naked Paige beneath. She blushes but doesn't try to get away, and I use the untied straps to pull her tight against me, run hands along her flesh, feeling places only I've ever known about her, and it's deeply flattering. My hands are normally nonstop around her, forming words, but now they're silent because I don't have anything to say to her. 

"Jono," she whispers even as a moan threatens to escape when my right hand slips between her thighs, searching for places that will make her do that again. She trembles against me when I find one, and I tease her for a moment before pulling both hands away. 

_Please. _

"We c-can't do this. Not now," she protests meekly, biting down harshly on her lower lip to keep from moaning again when I slide my hands up higher, guitar callouses brushing against creamy soft skin. 

_Please._

She's chewing her lip now, obviously torn between options, but I can feel the heat pouring in waves off her and I'm tempted to press on anyway. I wait because this is our last night together and I want her to be happy. Finally she nods and all but yanks me to her, whispering meaningless seductions in my ear as she pulls me down on top of her. I don't want to hurt her, but I have to. 

Oh God, Sunshine, oh God, please, please forgive me. I love you. 


	4. 4 (The End)

_Chaos and hate shadow me,_

_Pain, it fills me up._

_Only one thing makes me feel..._

_Missing better half of me._

_Black is all I feel, so this _

_Is how it feels to be free._

_-- Alice in Chains, "I Am Inside"_

She's sleeping, arms and legs wrapped impossibly tight around me. I'm surprised no one's come looking for her yet. She's usually up at five and off doing some charitable act or noble deed before most of us are even awake. It's going on ten and she's still sound asleep against me. I'd never realized until last night how very shy she is. Not coincidentally, I'd never known how beautiful, either. 

So I lay here and draw invisible patterns on her back with my fingertips and wonder if she'll hate me later. I hope she understands that I couldn't die without knowing how she feels, just once, and without letting her know that she's all that's kept me hanging on so long. Paige knows I love her. I want nothing else now. 

I stay this way for longer than I probably should, comforted a little by her warmth and innocence, then unwrap myself from her grip. I trail my fingers along her cheek and pray she won't wake up soon. I don't want her to find me. 

I'm almost able to do this when I feel compelled to go back to my room. Everything's still a mess, but it doesn't bother me. Instead, I pick up my guitar, that taped together hunk of blue junk I've had since I was fourteen, and start playing that song. Without even bothering to look at the songbook, I play it with no breaks or pauses, but as it was meant to be from beginning to end with a certainty that'd make you think I've known it all my life. In a way, maybe I have. 

The full ten minute opus ended with no frenzied solo or showy riff, just a sweet, slow tune that eventually dwindled to nothing. I almost chicken out, but I see a still burning stick of incense in the corner, then pat my guitar affectionately and place it against the amp that hasn't been used in months. I'm gonna miss that broken down piece of crap. I start up the stairs, making sure to lock the door on my way. 

I don't look back this time. 

In fact, I don't look back until I'm on the roof, wind whipping about and making me unsteady. I'm deathly afraid of heights, have been since I fell out of a tree when I was nine and broke my neck and got stuck in a brace for the next ten months. I cling to whatever's nearby and might give me something to hold onto until I'm ready to do this. How appropriate I've chosen to end it here. Ironic, even. 

Mind oddly clear, much clearer than it's been in months, I'm free to reflect on everything. All loose ends are tied up, I've left no debts, and I left no note. If an explanation was needed, then they didn't deserve a note to begin with because they didn't know me. And besides - notes mean pain. I know. I found Mum's when I was eleven. 

It's raining now. I want to cry, and all I bloody get is rain. It's fitting in a twisted sort of way. Maybe God's crying. That's what I thought when I found Mum and the empty Valium bottle in her hand on the kitchen floor. 

I take a step to the edge. God, if you're real. . .I don't ask forgiveness, really. Just understanding. Watch over Paige for me, and everyone else. 

Another step. It's raining harder, but I'm too far gone to catch the metaphoric beauty of it. 

Movement catches my right eye, and then Angelo rounds the corner of the building. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'd planned it perfectly so no one saw me, no! Don't back out now. No turning back, no going back to that miserable, lonely thing that's supposed to be a life. Don't look back. 

If I jump now, he'll never make it in time. 

Please forgive me. 

Angelo's cigarette hits the ground just as I take my last step, and he starts at a dead run, skin already stretching. 

Falling. 

Maybe he'll save me. 


End file.
